arXiv subjects

Zeren Simon Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Zeren Simon Wang.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Probing light sterile neutrinos in left-right symmetric models with displaced vertices and neutrinoless double beta decay

An investigation of relatively light (GeV-scale), long-lived right-handed neutrinos is performed within minimal left-right symmetric models using the neutrino-extended Standard Model Effective Field Theory framework. Light sterile neutrinos can be produced through rare decays of kaons, $D$-mesons, and $B$-mesons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) of Fermilab. Their decays could result in displaced vertices, which can be reconstructed. By performing Monte-Carlo simulations, we assess the sensitivities of the future LHC far-detector experiments ANUBIS, CODEX-b, FACET, FASER(2), MoEDAL-MAPP1(2), MATHUSLA, the recently approved beam-dump experiment SHiP, and the upcoming neutrino experiment DUNE at the LBNF, to the right-handed gauge-boson mass $M_{W_R}$ as functions of neutrino masses. We find that DUNE and SHiP could be sensitive to right-handed gauge-boson masses up to $\sim 25$ TeV. We compare this reach to indirect searches such as neutrinoless double beta decay, finding that displaced-vertex searches are very competitive.

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arXiv2025

Long-lived sterile neutrinos from an axionlike particle at Belle II

Axionlike particles (ALPs) can be produced in meson decays via tree-level quark-flavor-violating couplings, and decay to a pair of sterile neutrinos if also coupled to them. Such light sterile neutrinos are necessarily long-lived and may give rise to striking signatures of displaced vertices (DVs) at terrestrial experiments. In this work, we study the prospect of the ongoing Belle II experiment for detecting the sterile neutrinos from the ALP, leveraging the $\mathcal{O}(10^{10})$ $B$-mesons projected to be produced at the experiment with an integrated luminosity of 50 ab$^{-1}$. We propose search strategies for one or two DVs, and perform Monte-Carlo simulations in order to estimate the sensitivity reach of Belle II to active-sterile-neutrino mixing $|V_{eN}|^2$ as functions of the sterile-neutrino mass. Signatures include a selected list of sterile-neutrino final states, for which we estimate an $\mathcal{O}(1)$ or lower background level. Our results show that the proposed search strategies can probe values of $|V_{eN}|^2$ up to about two orders of magnitude beyond the existing bounds, for ALP mass over 4 GeV and sterile-neutrino mass above the $D$-meson threshold. Compared to the one-DV search, the two-DV one, despite its weaker sensitivities as a result of double exponential suppression of the sterile-neutrino decay positions, possesses the advantage of possible full reconstruction of the signal event allowing for pinning down the masses of the sterile neutrino and the ALP, if a discovery is made.

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arXiv2025

Searching for heavy neutral leptons coupled to axion-like particles at the LHC far detectors and SHiP

In hidden-sector models, axion-like particles (ALPs) can couple to heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), leading to rich phenomenologies. We study ALPs produced from $D$- and $B$-meson decays via quark-flavor-violating couplings, and decaying exclusively into a pair of HNLs which mix with active neutrinos. The ALP can be either short- or long-lived, depending on the masses of the ALP and the HNL, as well as the corresponding coupling strength. Such GeV-scale HNLs are necessarily long-lived given the current bounds on their mixing parameters. We assess the sensitivities of the LHC far detectors and SHiP, to the long-lived HNLs in such theoretical scenarios. We find that for currently allowed values of the ALP couplings, most of these experiments can probe the active-sterile-neutrino mixing parameters multiple orders of magnitude beyond the present bounds, covering large parameter region targeted with the type-I seesaw mechanism. In addition, our results show that compared to the case of a promptly decaying ALP, assuming an ALP of longer lifetimes weakens the sensitivities of the considered experiments to the long-lived HNLs.

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arXiv2025

Searching for long-lived light neutralinos and axionlike particles at the SHiNESS experiment

Recently Soleti et al. [JHEP03(2024)148] proposed a new experiment called SHiNESS at the upcoming European Spallation Source (ESS) facility, making use of the 2-GeV proton beam there impinging on a fixed target, in order to search for hidden sterile neutrinos that could lie in different mass ranges and arise with distinct signatures. Such signatures include excesses in electron-positron pairs that may originate from displaced decays of long-lived particles (LLPs). At the ESS, the dominant sources of such LLPs are decays at rest of $π^+$ mesons and $μ^+$ leptons. We choose to investigate theoretical scenarios of long-lived light neutralinos in the R-parity-violating supersymmetry and long-lived weak-violating electrophilic axionlike particles, as these LLPs can be produced from decays of $π^+$ and $μ^+$. Since the $π^+$'s and $μ^+$'s decay at rest at the ESS, we compute the spectra of the therefrom produced LLPs, and thus estimate the expected sensitivity reach of SHiNESS to the LLPs in these two scenarios. Our calculation shows that in multiple relevant benchmark scenarios, SHiNESS can probe large parameter regions of these models beyond the existing bounds, in just a couple of years of data-collection time.

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arXiv2025

Searching for long-lived particles from stopped pions and muons at the CiADS-BDE

The CiADS-BDE is a beam-dump experiment recently proposed for searching for light, long-lived particles (LLPs) at China initiative Accelerator Driven System. Primarily thanks to the large numbers of protons on target at the experiment, it has been shown to be sensitive to large, unique regions of the parameter space of dark photon, with a small detector volume of $\mathcal{O}(0.01\text{--}1)$ m$^3$. Here, we explore the search prospect of the CiADS-BDE for a series of new-physic models predicting LLPs that could emanate from decays at rest of charged pions and muons at the facility, namely, heavy neutral leptons, axionlike particles, and light binos in the R-parity-violating supersymmetry. For these benchmark models, we find that the CiADS-BDE can also probe vast parameter regions beyond the existing bounds.

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arXiv2025

The decay $B\to K+ν+\barν$ at Belle II and a massless bino in R-parity-violating supersymmetry

Recently, \texttt{Belle II} announced evidence for the decay $B^+\to K^+ +ν+\barν$ at the $3.5\,σ$ significance, and measured the corresponding decay branching ratio to be $2.7\,σ$ above the Standard Model prediction. Here, we provide a theoretical explanation based on a massless bino in R-parity-violating (RPV) supersymmetry. With a single non-vanishing RPV coupling $λ'_{i23/i32}$, $λ'_{i13/i33}$, or $λ'_{i12/i22}$, where $i=1,2,3$, the decay $B^+\to K^+ +\overset{\scriptscriptstyle(-)}{ν_i}+ \tildeχ^0_1$ can be induced, which would lead to the same signature as $B^+\to K^+ +ν+\barν$. Taking into account both theoretical and experimental uncertainties, we derive the regions of the parameter space spanned by the RPV couplings and sfermion masses that could accommodate the new measurement at various significance levels and obey the existing bounds simultaneously.

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arXiv2024

Constraining long-lived particles from Higgs boson decays at the LHC with displaced vertices and jets

Long-lived particles (LLPs) originating from decays of the Standard-Model or Beyond-the-Standard-Model Higgs bosons are often featured with signatures of displaced vertices (DVs) and jets at colliders. In this work, we show that a recent ATLAS search for DVs plus jets, with its recast implementation, can efficiently place bounds on such hadronically or semi-leptonically decaying LLPs. In particular, we find the search is uniquely sensitive to LLP proper decay lengths of about 1-100 mm, probing complementary regions in the parameter space of the relevant models compared to other prompt and LLP searches.

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arXiv2024

Quark flavor violation and axion-like particles from top-quark decays at the LHC

We study axion-like particles (ALPs) with quark-flavor-violating couplings at the LHC. Specifically, we focus on the theoretical scenario with ALP-top-up and ALP-top-charm interactions, in addition to the more common quark-flavor-diagonal couplings. The ALPs can thus originate from decays of top quarks which are pair produced in large numbers at the LHC, and then decay to jets. If these couplings to the quarks are tiny and the ALPs have $\mathcal{O}(10)$ GeV masses, they are long-lived, leading to signatures of displaced vertex plus multiple jets, which have the advantage of suppression of background events at the LHC. We recast a recent ATLAS search for the same signature and reinterpret the results in terms of bounds on the long-lived ALP in our theoretical scenario. We find that the LHC with the full Run 2 dataset can place stringent limits, while at the future high-luminosity LHC with 3 ab$^{-1}$ integrated luminosity stronger sensitivities are expected.

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arXiv2024

A C++ program for estimating detector sensitivities to long-lived particles: Displaced Decay Counter

A series of far-detector programs have been proposed for operation at various interaction points of the Large Hadron Collider during the upcoming runs. Investigating the potential and complementarity of these experiments for new-physics searches goes through the estimation of their sensitivity to specific long-lived particle models. Here, we present an integrated numerical tool written in the C++ language and called Displaced Decay Counter, which we have created to this end and which can be used in association with MadGraph5, Pythia8, or any other state-of-the-art Monte-Carlo collider simulation tool. Several far-detector models have been implemented within the program, accounting for the geometry and integrated luminosity of projected detectors. Additional or more accurate designs can be easily constructed through a dedicated interface. The functionality of this tool is exemplified through the discussion of three benchmark scenarios, which we consider for the validation of the implemented detector models.

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arXiv2024

Searching for light neutralinos with a displaced vertex at the LHC

We study a bino-like light neutralino ($\tilde χ_1^0$) produced at the LHC from the decay of a scalar lepton ($\tilde e_L$) through the process $pp\to \tilde e_{L} \to e\tilde χ_1^0$ in the context of R-parity-violating (RPV) supersymmetry where $\tilde χ_1^0$ is the lightest supersymmetric particle. For small masses and RPV couplings, the neutralino is naturally long-lived and its decay products can be identified as displaced tracks. Following existing searches, we propose a displaced-vertex search strategy for such a light neutralino with a single RPV coupling switched on, $λ'_{111}$, in the mass range $10\,\mbox{GeV} \lesssim m_{\tilde χ_1^0}\lesssim 230\,\mbox{GeV}$. We perform Monte Carlo simulations and conclude that at the high-luminosity LHC, the proposed search can probe values of $λ'_{111}$ down to two orders of magnitude smaller than current bounds and up to 40 times stronger than projected limits from monolepton searches.

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arXiv2024

Heavy neutral leptons from kaons in effective field theory

In the framework of the low-energy effective theory containing in addition to the Standard Model fields heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), we compute the decay rates of neutral and charged kaons into HNLs. We consider both lepton-number-conserving and lepton-number-violating four-fermion operators, taking into account also the contribution of active-heavy neutrino mixing. Assuming that the produced HNLs are long-lived, we perform simulations and calculate the sensitivities of future long-lived-particle (LLP) detectors at the high-luminosity LHC as well as the near detector of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE-ND) to the considered scenario. When applicable, we also recast the existing bounds on the minimal mixing case obtained by NA62, T2K, and PS191. Our findings show that while the future LHC LLP detectors can probe currently allowed parameter space only in certain benchmark scenarios, DUNE-ND should be sensitive to parameter space beyond the current bounds in almost all the benchmark scenarios and for some of the effective operators considered it can even probe new-physics scales in excess of 3000 TeV.

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arXiv2024

Probing dark photons from a light scalar at Belle II

In the minimal $U(1)$ extension of the Standard Model (SM), a new gauge boson referred to as "dark photon" is predicted. The dark-photon mass can be generated from an additional Higgs mechanism associated with a dark scalar boson. At $B$-factories such as Belle II, large numbers of $B$-mesons are produced and can decay to a kaon plus the dark scalar via the latter's mixing with the SM Higgs boson. We evaluate the sensitivity of Belle II for the case in which the dark scalar decays exclusively into a pair of dark photons via the new $U(1)$ gauge coupling, and the dark photons are long lived owing to a small kinetic mixing $ε$. We study the experimental signature in which each dark photon decays into a pair of charged leptons, pions, or kaons, resulting in a pair of displaced vertices, and argue that the search is essentially background-free. We perform detailed Monte-Carlo simulations to determine the expected number of signal events at Belle II with an integrated luminosity of 50 ab$^{-1}$, taking into account the efficiencies for both final-state-particle identification and displaced tracking. We find that for experimentally allowed values of the scalar mixing angle and kinematically allowed dark-photon and dark-scalar masses, the proposed search is uniquely sensitive to the medium-$ε$ regime, which is currently mostly unexcluded by experiments.

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arXiv2023

Long-lived neutral fermions at the DUNE near detector

At the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), a proton beam hits a fixed target leading to large production rates of mesons. These mesons can decay and potentially provide a source of long-lived neutral fermions. Examples of such long-lived fermions are heavy neutral leptons which can mix with the standard-model active neutrinos, and the bino-like lightest neutralino in R-parity-violating supersymmetry. We show that the Standard Model Effective Field Theory extended with right-handed singlet neutrinos can simultaneously describe heavy neutral leptons and bino-like neutralinos in a unified manner. We use the effective-field-theory framework to determine the sensitivity reach of the DUNE near detector in probing various scenarios of long-lived neutral fermions.

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arXiv2023

Probing the dipole portal to heavy neutral leptons via meson decays at the high-luminosity LHC

We consider the dipole portal to sterile neutrinos, also called heavy neutral leptons (HNLs). The dipole interaction with the photon leads to HNL production in meson decays, as well as triggers the HNL decay into an active neutrino and a photon. HNLs with masses of order of 0.01-1 GeV are naturally long-lived if the dipole coupling is sufficiently small. We perform Monte-Carlo simulations and derive the sensitivities of the proposed FASER2 and FACET long-lived particle experiments to HNLs produced via the dipole operator in meson decays at the high-luminosity LHC. Our findings show that these future detectors will be complementary to each other, as well as to existing experiments, and will be able to probe new parts of the parameter space, especially in the case of the dipole operator coupled to the tau neutrino.

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arXiv2023

Can we discover lepton number violation with LHC far detectors?

Two classes of far detectors have been proposed or are under operation at the LHC. The first class is a series of neutrino detectors that are sensitive to light active neutrinos via either charged-current or neutral-current interactions; exemplary ideas are FASER$ν$, SND@LHC, and FLArE. Another type aims primarily at looking for displaced decays of long-lived particles (LLPs) into charged final-state particles, including ANUBIS and FASER. In this work, we propose searches for probing lepton number violation associated with a Majorana active/sterile neutrino, for the first time with these experiments, which, if discovered, would be a clear signature of new physics beyond the Standard Model. With Monte-Carlo simulation, we find that while the neutrino detectors, unfortunately, are estimated to have signal-event rates orders of magnitude below $\mathcal{O}(1)$, some LLP far detectors such as ANUBIS, if upgraded, would be most promising for discovering a Majorana sterile neutrino of mass $\mathcal{O}(\text{1})$ GeV in certain so-far unexcluded parameter space. In this exploratory work, we emphasize on the importance of leveraging the LHC far detectors for purposes beyond the planned ones, such as searching for lepton number violation.

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arXiv2023

Recasting Bounds on Long-lived Heavy Neutral Leptons in Terms of a Light Supersymmetric R-parity Violating Neutralino

In R-parity-violating (RPV) supersymmetric models, light neutralinos with masses from the GeV-scale down to even zero are still allowed by all laboratory constraints. They are further consistent with dark matter observations, as they decay via RPV couplings. These RPV couplings are in general constrained to be small. Hence, such light neutralinos, if produced, e.g., at a beam-dump or collider experiment, appear as displaced vertices or missing energy at the detector level. The same signatures have been extensively searched for at various experiments in the theoretical context of sterile neutrinos which mix with active neutrinos. In this work, we recast the sensitivity of both past and present experiments to sterile neutrinos to obtain new bounds on RPV couplings associated with a light neutralino. We find experiments such as T2K, BEBC, FASER, DUNE, and MoEDAL-MAPP can improve the current bounds on RPV couplings by up to $3-4$ orders of magnitude in several benchmark scenarios.

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arXiv2023

Reinterpretation of searches for long-lived particles from meson decays

Many models beyond the Standard Model predict light and feebly interacting particles that are often long-lived. These long-lived particles (LLPs) in many cases can be produced from meson decays. In this work, we propose a simple and quick reinterpretation method for models predicting LLPs produced from meson decays. With the method, we are not required to run Monte-Carlo simulation, implement detector geometries and efficiencies, or apply experimental cuts in an event analysis, as typically done in recasting and reinterpretation works. The main ingredients our method requires are only the theoretical input, allowing for computation of the production and decay rates of the LLPs. There are two conditions for the method to work: firstly, the LLPs in the models considered should be produced from a set of mesons with similar mass and lifetime (or the same meson) and second, the LLPs should, in general, have a lab-frame decay length much larger than the distance between the interaction point and the detector. As an example, we use this method to reinterpret exclusion bounds on heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) in the minimal ``3+1'' scenario, into those for HNLs in the general effective-field-theory framework as well as for axion-like particles. We are able to reproduce existing results, and obtain new bounds via reinterpretation of past experimental results, in particular, from CHARM and Belle.

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arXiv2023

Probing $R$-parity violation in $B$-meson decays to a baryon and a light neutralino

We propose a search for $B$ meson decays to a baryon plus missing energy at the Belle II experiment to probe supersymmetry with a GeV-scale lightest neutralino ${\tildeχ_1^0}$ and $R$-parity violation (RPV). We perform analytic computations of the signal branching fractions in the framework of effective field theory, with a single nonzero RPV operator $λ''_{ij3}\bar{U}_{i}^c\bar{D}_{j}^c\bar{D}_3^c$, where $i,j=1,2$. The hadronic form factors are calculated using an SU(3) phenomenological Lagrangian approach for the proton, as well as several hyperons and charmed baryons. Since the decay of the neutralino is kinematically and CKM suppressed in this theoretical scenario, it decays outside the detector and appears experimentally only as missing energy. We detail the analysis techniques at the experimental level and estimate the background in the ${B^+ \to p {\tildeχ_1^0}}$ search using published results for $B^+\to K^+ ν\barν$. Our final sensitivity plots are shown for both $λ''_{113}$ versus the squark mass $m_{\tilde{q}}$ and $λ''_{113}/m^2_{\tilde{q}}$ versus the neutralino mass $m_{\tildeχ_1^0}$. We find that the search at Belle II could probe $λ''_{113}/m^2_{\tilde{q}}$ down to the order of $10^{-8}$ GeV$^{-2}$ in the kinematically allowed $m_{\tildeχ_1^0}$ range. We also obtain current limits on $λ''_{123}$ by recasting an existing search interpreted as ${B^0 \to Λ^0 {\tildeχ_1^0}}$, and comment about searches for ${B^+ \to Σ^+ {\tildeχ_1^0}}$, ${B^0 \to Σ^0 {\tildeχ_1^0}}$, ${B^+ \to Λ_c^+ {\tildeχ_1^0}}$, and ${B^+ \to Ξ_c^+ {\tildeχ_1^0}}$. In closing, we briefly discuss potential searches at the LHCb and BESIII experiments.

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